A Money Making Experiment - Feedback and Active Involvement Welcome

c.ford

First of all, hello!

This is my first visit and post on these forums and I am here to hopefully offer you all a chance to make a little money. One thing I will say first - the experiment will NOT make you a millionaire or solve all your financial problems (if you have any), sorry ! I really wish it could.

To begin with, a bit about me. I'm Joe, and me and my missus run a site, to which I'm not going to reveal the link as I don't want to be seen as a spammer. I just want to throw a few ideas at you all and see if you can pick some holes in it, as well as find out if it would be something you'd be interested in. (I have actually asked MSE to clarify the rules on posting links here, so for the moment until I hear back from them I can't post the link anyway!). If you all decide that you WANT the link because you are insanely interested in the project then that's cool.

Anyway, onto the concept.

We would like to pay you to write content for us. However, we're broke, so we can't :P

We would therefore like to set up a revenue sharing system, whereby you earn money every time someone clicks an advert in your material. The revenue share ratio would be 75% into your account, 25% into ours. At the moment, our system only supports adsense publishers, but we will be looking at getting other networks on board too.

Now on to the content. We want to solve problems for people. We aren't particularly fussy about what the problem is; as long as it is deemed socially acceptable it's all good. But for example, someone may come along and say something like "Can you help me with my chemistry homework problem?" Then hopefully we get a good few answers, after which the user selects the question that best worked for him.

How you could make money from this:

If your questions perform well enough and if you ask enough of them they will start to get clicks on advertising within the content. 75% of this income will go straight to your publisher account.

We have also implemented a points system (this is focused on the answering questions portion of the experiment as we haven't been able to link answering questions into earning cash, but you are also awarded points for logging in once a day, writing new questions and other stuff). We are thinking about what to do with the points once they are accrued, and your feedback and suggestions (if you are interested in this project) are most welcome. Indeed, most people will probably say "can't we just exchange the points for cash?", and while this is a great idea, we would need to invest a little more into development before this becomes a steady and stable income reality.

So anyway, I think I've covered everything. If you are interested in this opportunity, please ONLY post here. I would really like this to be as open a discussion as possible. Please, I respectfully ask that you don't PM me about this as I don't want people to miss out on any suggestions or feedback that may be valuable to them.

Oh, one more cool thing about our system, is that we have discovered a way of generating literally thousands of ideas and squirting them into an inbox in email form. Then you simply rewrite it as a new question. That's one feature I'm particularly proud of.

Thanks all and I look forward to your feedback and suggestions.

Joe

PS Sorry for the mega long post!

Flyonthewall

It's a nice idea but one that is very open to spam/abuse. People will be asking silly, pointless questions simply to gain money and the chances are most won't click on the ads relating to the questions because, first, it's clear it's spam and, second, most members on the site will be there trying to get out as many questions as possible in a day, not looking for answers.

Plus you'd have to be careful that members weren't clicking on their own ads or getting others to abuse that because that would affect you (unless each member uses their own adsense account).

You could limit the number of questions but it won't reduce spam because people will still come on daily, post pointless questions and leave.

Similar thing for the answers, people will post answers that don't answer the question or are one word answers to gain points and, possibly in time, rewards.

How are you making money from people rewriting new questions? Ads in emails or from them posting the rewrite on the site? Surely the site works best if you have original content, not rewritten content over and over. Also what's to stop multiple people rewriting the same thing? Again, spamming the site. Not to mention you don't want to spam your members with constant emails asking them to rewrite content.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea or anything, but perhaps it requires some more thought so as to be sure people can not spam and/or abuse it.

c.ford

Flyonthewall wrote: »

It's a nice idea but one that is very open to spam/abuse. People will be asking silly, pointless questions simply to gain money and the chances are most won't click on the ads relating to the questions because, first, it's clear it's spam and, second, most members on the site will be there trying to get out as many questions as possible in a day, not looking for answers.

Plus you'd have to be careful that members weren't clicking on their own ads or getting others to abuse that because that would affect you (unless each member uses their own adsense account).

You could limit the number of questions but it won't reduce spam because people will still come on daily, post pointless questions and leave.

Similar thing for the answers, people will post answers that don't answer the question or are one word answers to gain points and, possibly in time, rewards.

How are you making money from people rewriting new questions? Ads in emails or from them posting the rewrite on the site? Surely the site works best if you have original content, not rewritten content over and over. Also what's to stop multiple people rewriting the same thing? Again, spamming the site. Not to mention you don't want to spam your members with constant emails asking them to rewrite content.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea or anything, but perhaps it requires some more thought so as to be sure people can not spam and/or abuse it.

Thanks for the input Flyonthewall. Some of it actually gives us something to chew on! But I'll go through it bit by bit and give you my thoughts.

Rewritten content is fine as long as it passes plagiarism checks (Copyscape etc.) which we will have built in. The one word answer thing isn't a problem because every publishing action is moderated. One word answers simply will not be tolerated, nor will poorly written content. It would be a much more spammable system if we didn't have moderation in place.

You're absolutely right that I don't want to spam users with requests for rewritten content. I'd like to just clear this a bit more actually. The idea generation/rewritten content is an option, it's not a prerequisite, not something that anyone must do. Plus the content would be sent to a new email account (what you might call a working account) as opposed to a personal account, this would be made very clear to new members.

Also, we would never ask anyone to create content, as this site is purely to solve problems. The idea is that you are incentivised by the idea of free advertising money. Look at Yahoo answers for example. It only offers points as an incentive, but their advertising yield is enormous!

Pointless questions are only pointless if they appear to be so. I hope that makes sense. For example if some says "How do I fix my hoover?" it's quite possible to start a discussion from that, which is exactly what we are looking for.

Again thanks for your feedback!

Browntoa

Any mention of your own web site to promote it would never be allowed on the forum in any area including the referrals section , the forum FAQ's are clear on that I am afraid

You would get away with asking generic feedback questions but any mention of your site would end up with the whole thread getting removed

c.ford

Browntoa wrote: »

Any mention of your own web site to promote it would never be allowed on the forum in any area including the referrals section , the forum FAQ's are clear on that I am afraid

You would get away with asking generic feedback questions but any mention of your site would end up with the whole thread getting removed

Thanks Browntoa! As I said, I have asked the forum team what to do as it seems a little unclear due to the fact that Swagbucks and Clixxsense links etc are mentioned all the time. Maybe they are commercial partners, I don't know, but either way I've been polite, I'm not a spammer and I will wait to see what they say.

As I don't stand to make money from anyone as a result of sales or anything like that, (in fact I'm trying to help others make money which I figure is part of what you guys do here on MSE), I'm hoping I won't be seen as a spammer.

Anyway, I've been a good boy lol

Browntoa

Those are sort of communal help threads

Some of the risks in your idea , people writing scripts to automate the process to abuse the system , you paying out and then google down the line deciding to withhold payment due to suspicious action

Personally the first place I would look for " how to fix my Hoover" would be YouTube , fixed a dyson and GDH's using that method , and there's many specialised web sites doing the same that I have used in the past

c.ford

Browntoa wrote: »

Those are sort of communal help threads

Some of the risks in your idea , people writing scripts to automate the process to abuse the system , you paying out and then google down the line deciding to withhold payment due to suspicious action

Personally the first place I would look for " how to fix my Hoover" would be YouTube , fixed a dyson and GDH's using that method , and there's many specialised web sites doing the same that I have used in the past

Appreciate the ideas, thanks!

Automation scripts are useless as far as posting content is concerned. All new posts and comments are moderated by human eyes only, plus we have adsense clickfraud protection built in. Spambots are actually a dying breed now. We don't even use captchas in most areas of the sites as pretty much any action that includes publishing content is eyeballed.

I agree that people do use a multitude of other ways to get solutions to problems, but market research shows that there is a new trend of "Paid-to-ask" sites getting a lot of attention.

I know that if I could get a few pence on my account for asking a question I'd go for it! As WELL as finding my solution on places like YT and Yahoo Answers.

Financially its sound, and we do have security built in/ We will also introduce other ways of saving/making some money by using points, but we are still ironing that out.

Thanks for your input Browntoa, it's appreciated.

Flyonthewall

c.ford wrote: »

Thanks for the input Flyonthewall. Some of it actually gives us something to chew on! But I'll go through it bit by bit and give you my thoughts.

Rewritten content is fine as long as it passes plagiarism checks (Copyscape etc.) which we will have built in. The one word answer thing isn't a problem because every publishing action is moderated. One word answers simply will not be tolerated, nor will poorly written content. It would be a much more spammable system if we didn't have moderation in place.

Apart from systems/search engines not liking copied/spam content, users also won't want to see the same questions repeated. A user may click on two or three questions that are the same to see more of a range of answers but beyond that the rest are just taking up unwanted space and therefore are spamming and won't be making any money.

Why would I want to spend my time answering the same question over and over again? I'd have to keep rewriting my answer too so as not to spam or have it deleted for copying (even if I am copying my own content).

I mean, on a forum such as this you often see the same type of questions and many people answer each one. However, on here you know you're helping that person. On your site you'd be answering it to get them money and probably rarely actually helping anyone.

I'm all for helping and gaining money through a question and answer site but there's no motivation for anyone to answer the same question over and over. Rewards for points may help this but even then you're basically allowing the other person to gain money for one question while you're writing away answering loads just to try and gain points to hopefully be able to redeem them someday.

You're absolutely right that I don't want to spam users with requests for rewritten content. I'd like to just clear this a bit more actually. The idea generation/rewritten content is an option, it's not a prerequisite, not something that anyone must do. Plus the content would be sent to a new email account (what you might call a working account) as opposed to a personal account, this would be made very clear to new members.

So to a private member inbox on the site? Fair enough.

Also, we would never ask anyone to create content, as this site is purely to solve problems. The idea is that you are incentivised by the idea of free advertising money. Look at Yahoo answers for example. It only offers points as an incentive, but their advertising yield is enormous!

As soon as you offer money you lose that though because people won't think "hey I have a problem, I'll ask and make a few pence doing so" they'll think "hey I can ask a question on anything and make money for nothing, what can I ask?" and even sites not offering money get trolls/spammers.

Pointless questions are only pointless if they appear to be so. I hope that makes sense. For example if some says "How do I fix my hoover?" it's quite possible to start a discussion from that, which is exactly what we are looking for.

Again thanks for your feedback!

Yeah but what's to stop someone asking things like "can you guess the name of my cat?" or "I have £1 which football team should I buy?" They don't help anyone, there's no real value to the questions, nothing much to discuss. They're simply silly questions asked in an attempt to gain money.

The ads wouldn't be helpful because no one looking at such questions is likely to care about the cat/football ad (as an example) on the page as they're there to give a pointless answer in an attempt to gain points. No one clicking the ads means no money. No money means members stop posting.

Of course, they may lead the way for only the real questions but then again it's less traffic to the site (less money for others), there will always be more spammers who join, those asking silly questions may have serious questions and go elsewhere thinking they won't get paid anyway.

Where do you stand on people posting links? Links can be very helpful and it saves people copying and pasting details from other sites. It does mean they're being linked away from your site though and allows for members to post referral links. Not always a bad thing but there are obviously dodgy sites and it would be hard to monitor it.

Just wondering, do you actually have this site built or is it simply an idea? Is it something you plan to design/build yourself?

c.ford

One more thing Browntoa, you said "you paying out and then google down the line deciding to withhold payment due to suspicious action". Its a good point. But I should point out that the system will initally be a revenue share, however the payouts on advertising will come directly from Google, so I am effectively out of the "payout" loop. You insert your publisher ID once in the backend of our system (your dashboard), and the system automagically inserts that code into the adverts 75% of the time.

And as I mentioned, we have click fraud protection built in, so that removes a LOT of the risk involved with what Google like to deem "suspicious activity".

We've been round the revshare block a few times

c.ford

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Apart from systems/search engines not liking copied/spam content, users also won't want to see the same questions repeated. A user may click on two or three questions that are the same to see more of a range of answers but beyond that the rest are just taking up unwanted space and therefore are spamming and won't be making any money.

While its very true that search engines, and more importantly people don't like copied content, it IS a fact of life and there is absolutely no harm in two people asking the same question in ten different places (it happens all the time and is a natural fact of internet life). John Smith on Yahoo Answers asks "How do I fix a red Raleigh Banana racing bike"? while on my site Jason Jones asks "How do I repair my red Raleigh racer bike?"

This happens all the time and its generally the sites with more authority who win that particualr battle. With age and time comes aithority and thats a LONG battle. But its one that everyone must fight, and its one that we will happily fight.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Why would I want to spend my time answering the same question over and over again? I'd have to keep rewriting my answer too so as not to spam or have it deleted for copying (even if I am copying my own content).

I mean, on a forum such as this you often see the same type of questions and many people answer each one. However, on here you know you're helping that person. On your site you'd be answering it to get them money and probably rarely actually helping anyone.

To be honest, with everything being moderated by human eyes, its very easy to see the spammers at work. Its actually impossible for anyone with a "Contributor" role (the default role for normal members) to post a new question or comment without passing human moderation. We will know when someone is playing at silly beggars.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

I'm all for helping and gaining money through a question and answer site but there's no motivation for anyone to answer the same question over and over. Rewards for points may help this but even then you're basically allowing the other person to gain money for one question while you're writing away answering loads just to try and gain points to hopefully be able to redeem them someday.

The same question is not likely to be posted all that often on our site as we are building plagiarism plugins into the site that detect duplicate or near-duplicate content that will actually suggest to the author during editing that he go and look at the similar posts first before he asks a pointless question.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

So to a private member inbox on the site? Fair enough.

Strangely enough I was going to suggest a free Hotmail or Gmail account for this purpose, but this seems like a much healthier idea. Thanks! Its often simple things like this that get overlooked, so thanks for this, you've given me more food for thought!

Flyonthewall wrote: »

As soon as you offer money you lose that though because people won't think "hey I have a problem, I'll ask and make a few pence doing so" they'll think "hey I can ask a question on anything and make money for nothing, what can I ask?" and even sites not offering money get trolls/spammers.

Thats true they do. But we have human moderation and spamming will simply NOT be accepted.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Yeah but what's to stop someone asking things like "can you guess the name of my cat?" or "I have £1 which football team should I buy?" They don't help anyone, there's no real value to the questions, nothing much to discuss. They're simply silly questions asked in an attempt to gain money.

This made me chuckle, but honestly, we will be looking at ways of deterring users from doing that, such as a "downvote" button which will lose them points. Edit: Plus they will have to get past human eyes first.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

The ads wouldn't be helpful because no one looking at such questions is likely to care about the cat/football ad (as an example) on the page as they're there to give a pointless answer in an attempt to gain points. No one clicking the ads means no money. No money means members stop posting.

Of course, they may lead the way for only the real questions but then again it's less traffic to the site (less money for others), there will always be more spammers who join, those asking silly questions may have serious questions and go elsewhere thinking they won't get paid anyway.

There will always be a slight loss of human capiutal with ventures like this, but usually its negligible. I used to use Neobux and then I realised I was the one at the bottom of the pile and that it was an utter waste of time. I'm hoping that by offering enough incentives and enough community policing we can help some people make a little money and have some fun doing so.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Where do you stand on people posting links? Links can be very helpful and it saves people copying and pasting details from other sites. It does mean they're being linked away from your site though and allows for members to post referral links. Not always a bad thing but there are obviously dodgy sites and it would be hard to monitor it.

Posting links is fine as long as they are not to dodgy neighbourhoods and as long as the links point to relevant content. We will be monitoring EVERYTHING that happens on the site though.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Just wondering, do you actually have this site built or is it simply an idea? Is it something you plan to design/build yourself?

The site is built and we are now beta testing it.

Some really useful input there, especially about site based email addresses. Might seem really logical to you lol but these are the little details that get so easily overlooked when you are building up a venture like this.

Thanks a lot for your time Flyonthewall, its really helpful.

Flyonthewall

c.ford wrote: »

Appreciate the ideas, thanks!

Automation scripts are useless as far as posting content is concerned. All new posts and comments are moderated by human eyes only, plus we have adsense clickfraud protection built in. Spambots are actually a dying breed now. We don't even use captchas in most areas of the sites as pretty much any action that includes publishing content is eyeballed.

Moderated by humans? Do you realise how much work that is? What if your site grows and you end up with thousands of questions being asked? That is a lot of work!

Besides the content generated may make perfect sense but that doesn't mean that someone isn't using a script to do so. You would have to monitor the speed in which every member is posting to see whether it's likely a system is doing it. Even then someone may be able to type fast and could be posting short answers to questions and you wouldn't want to ban a legit member.

Bots are still use on many sites across the internet and people are always writing new scripts to get around blocks. Why wouldn't they? They stand to gain free money.